I got this in exchange for building some speaker boxes for someone wanting to combine their HT and stereo systems using separate, more powerful amps. It sounded great in his HT but I never used it myself. It would be great for tri-amping.

Not everyone wants to build amplifiers. Witness the problems that inexperienced builders have with GCs - smoke is released, they hum, they oscillate, many agonize over pots and where to get suitable cases. And then the builder winds up here on DIY looking for solutions to problems they can't accurately describe.

Considering time, parts and shipping (not to mention aggravation), a GC can easily wind up costing much more than an equivalent commercial amplifier.

Building a GC would be a walk in the park for me but I'd rather plunk down $150 and buy a used GAS Grandson which, I'm sure, performs a lot better than a GC anyway.

Not to suggest that GC building doesn't have an upside. The experience and being able to say you've built it does have some value.

Even if I were to build 6 channels of GC, I'd definately be over $300 and I doubt that in an active system, and at reasonable volume levels there's not going to be a noticable difference.

Bill, I'm still very interested in the Rotel. I'm looking into a couple more XR series receivers at the moment, just for experimentations sake. I've really been impressed with these receivers and I'd love to take advantage of them.